The success of your e-commerce business highly depends on having an e-commerce website and implementing effective search engine optimization (SEO) strategies.
With the proper approach, you can expect more of your potential customers to come across your e-commerce website on search engine results pages (SERPs), browse through your web pages, and consider buying products from you.
Since 93% of online experiences begin with an inquiry on search engines like Google, enhancing your e-commerce website with SEO will help increase its visibility.
The more people click on it, the higher your search engine ranking will become, which can help drive more traffic and sales to your e-commerce website.
Businesses, however, should understand not all SEO techniques are suitable for an e-commerce website, and this is when you need to know the difference between black hat SEO and white hat SEO.
Black hat SEO does not only harm your search engine rankings and damage your reputation in the long run but your e-commerce website might get banned permanently by Google.
Thus, be mindful of the SEO strategies you implement on your e-commerce website. Here are some ways to enhance your e-commerce SEO.
Best 8 Tips for Ecommerce SEO
1. Use Proper URL Structure
The URL of your e-commerce website is like a business card. It is the first thing potential customers will see before landing on a web page.
If it looks messy, they might think twice before going to your e-commerce website. And for search engines, their bots might not be able to crawl properly and index your web pages. Noindex means your web pages might not appear on SERPs.
That is why the URL of your e-commerce website should be simple and readable, as shown in the image example below.
2. Update Your Content Regularly
Besides creating high-quality content for your e-commerce website, you have to make sure all texts and images are up to date to remain relevant and engaging to read.
Since the goal of a search engine is to provide valuable information to its user, your updated content will likely perform better on SERPs. So make sure to update all of your content as often as possible.
Here are the things you need to take note of to create quality content:
- Write clearly and focus on clarity
- Use a consistent brand voice
- Keep things simple
- Insert keywords properly in the right areas
3. Get An SSL Certificate
Consumers nowadays are getting smarter with their customer purchase journey.
Before they can even browse through the web pages of an e-commerce website, they always take note of their safety by checking if the platform where they are planning to shop has an SSL certificate.
Being SSL certified refers to the URL of your e-commerce website that will have an “S” right after “HTTP”, which stands for secure, with a padlock icon in the address bar.
The purpose of an SSL certificate is to enable an encrypted connection between a web server and a web browser.
4. Prioritize Product Pages
Another way to enhance your e-commerce website with SEO is to prioritize your product pages. Make sure the product pages are presentable since it will help nudge any potential customers to make a purchase.
Besides adding the right keywords to the product description, use quality images and add a zooming feature so your customers can look close to the products and leave feedback.
5. Perform Regular Maintenance
Like your brick-and-mortar store, your e-commerce website also requires regular maintenance.
The only difference is that instead of changing light bulbs and fixing leaks, the problem you need to watch out for is the technical SEO issues that your e-commerce website is experiencing.
When it comes to technical SEO issues, these talk about the intricate aspects of your e-commerce website like duplicate content, poor mobile experience, improper redirect, and many more.
You need to know which technical SEO issues are going on your e-commerce website before you can resolve any of these. Here are the tools you can use to perform regular maintenance.
- Google Analytics
- Google Search Console
6. Improve The UX Of Your E-Commerce Website
Another thing you need to do to enhance your e-commerce website is to improve the UX. This acronym stands for user experience, which refers to how a user interacts and navigates while they are browsing through the web pages of an e-commerce website.
Here are some tips on how to improve the UX of your e-commerce website:
- Allow guests to sign up using their Facebook or Google account
- Use responsive design for mobile optimization
- Include a customer support
- Suggest more delivery and payment options
- Be upfront with your inventory
7. Avoid Broken Links
If you were to place yourself into your customers’ shoes, would you like it when you click on a specific web page and nothing comes out but “404 PAGE NOT FOUND”?
Unfortunately, this is what happens with broken links. Your potential customers cannot view or access the product’s web page they want to check out and consider buying.
Before a website visitor stumbles upon any broken links on your e-commerce website, resolve any broken links first.
Use Google Search Console or W3C Link Checker to check if your e-commerce website has broken links.
8. Boost The Speed Of Your E-Commerce Website
The fast-paced lifestyle makes everyone hate the thought of waiting. According to Google, consumers often leave an e-commerce website if they have to wait longer than three seconds before a web page loads.
To avoid losing customers because of slow loading times, improve the speed of your e-commerce website.
The faster it is, the better. Your customers can start their purchase journey as soon as they land on your website.